The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1 eBook

The Body and the Soul united then,
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A gentle start convulsed Ianthe’s frame:
Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;
Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained:
She looked around in wonder and beheld
Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,
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Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,
And the bright beaming stars
That through the casement shone.

The poem entitled “Alastor” may be considered
as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations
of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted
feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination
inflamed and purified through familiarity with all
that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation
of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains
of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence
and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into
the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their
modifications at variety not to be exhausted. so long
as it is possible for his desires to point towards
objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous,
and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period
arrives when these objects cease to suffice.
His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts
for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself.
He images to himself the Being whom he loves.
Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and
most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies
his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise,
or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the
lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties,
the imagination, the functions of sense, have their
respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding
powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented
as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to
a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype
of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment,
he descends to an untimely grave.